Preserving Open Space in Anchorage

Whoever treasures the open spaces of Alaska often wonders how green areas can preserved in an urban setting. Short of making every one of them a park, there are interesting alternatives. Many of the choices can have positive economic benefits for the owners. Making it happen doesn’t have to be a confrontation between development and conservation groups.

Consider a 50 acre parcel that abuts my home off Rabbit Creek Road. There are two or three dozen private parcels and homes surrounding it. There’s public access at several points. It’s wet most of the year. So wet that developer Rex Turner gave up on it over ten years ago, even though he had recorded a plat for future home sites.

Now the neighbors wander around in there with their dogs. Some drive snow machines through, or ski. One party of birders on a tour from out of state got lost there three years ago, surprising some of us when they emerged from the alders, disoriented, at seven in the morning.

The FDIC could hardly get rid of the parcel, its aesthetic values notwithstanding. They tried to auction it off, with an asking price of over $250,000. Two years later the price was down to about half that. One choice the neighbors had, if we had our act together, was to form an improvement district. We could have voted to tax ourselves to buy and maintain it, with an annual assessment for insurance and minimal maintenance. It’s the same mechanism a group uses to extend utilities to themselves.

Another choice, had we had the political muscle, and a good case, would have been to get the Municipality to buy it and make a public park out of it. Funds for park maintenance are scare enough, and parks plentiful enough, however, without expecting Anchorage, or the Heritage Land Bank to rush in. Yet another idea if the parcel had critical environmental sensitivity, would have been to talk to the Nature Conservancy of Alaska. But this parcel probably isn’t that important.

So none of these ideas took hold and eventually somebody bought it. The new owner says he doesn’t know what he will do with it, except maybe build a nice home for himself some day. Well, that’s a lot of land to pay taxes on.

Depending on his economic circumstances and feelings for the property, he may be the kind of guy who would like to save money and preserve the special characteristics of this bit of open space. If so, the organization he should call is the Great Land Trust. “Landowners have three important categories of questions to consider,” their publication reads, “finances, heirs and future land uses.”

The Trust works with an owner to establish a conservation easement, a voluntary agreement that forever precludes future development. “Donors may reduce their income, estate and property taxes as a result,” according to the Trust. With proper estate planning, with the heirs in agreement, and a vision for the property and a plan to manage it, a conservation easement can have considerable appeal. Nor does a conservation easement prevent the owner from building his home and living there.

Another parcel that’s been attracting much more public attention is the large parcel of Dr. Mike Beirne at the end of 80^th, west of Jewell Lake Rd. It is in the most restrictive federal wetlands category as it sits in the middle of a chain of wetlands and park land that extends from the south shore of Sand Lake, to Jewell Lake. His application for a wetlands permit to develop it is meeting stiff resistance from neighbors and something less than an open welcome from the Army Corps of Engineers.

Dr. Beirne, who has owned the parcel since long before wetlands became a topic of strict regulation, makes the point that a landowner deprived of the economic use of his property should be entitled to recompense. Can the city give him some land he can improve so Anchorage could add his wetlands parcel to its parks holdings? “There is no mechanism for enhancement or exchange,” City Planning Director Sheila Selkregg told a wetlands seminar last week. “To make parks we have to have a strategy to purchase critical lands.”

Short of such mechanisms, one wonders whether Dr. Beirne is considering all the alternatives. Maybe he should talk to the Great Land Trust or the Nature Conservancy. And maybe the neighbors should be talking to each other about forming an improvement district. Rather than simple opposition, maybe they should just buy it.